The Story of an English Vampire
by strawberryella
Summary: There are just a few things to know about British vampires...
1. Chapter 1

Introduction

There are just a few things to know about British vampires

There aren't very many of us, less than 100 at a guess.

We are very fragmented, living alone or in mated pairs almost exclusively.

We are very, very, very secretive.

We are pathologically territorial.

The mechanisms of ethical feeding in the UK, and indeed most of modern Europe, is much more complicated than it is in the United States. This small island has been continually inhabited for over 10,000 years. Once upon a time wolves, bears, wild boar, lynx and massive red deer roamed the ancient dark forests but there haven't been any real forests here for nearly 500 years. The eurasian lynx disappeared first, probably as early as 400AD and bears were close behind. Wolves hung on until 1740 but thousands of years of hunting now means that pretty much the closest thing to a carnivorous predator anywhere east of Russia is the humble red fox.

The largest land mammal in the British Isles is the modern red deer, these are a lot smaller than their ancient ancestors and unfortunately live almost exclusively in the national parks of Scotland where their numbers are monitored. Fallow deer and roe deer are much more common but are so tiny they barely constitute a mouthful, it would be like living totally from tiny chunks of wafer, urgh. With this in mind one could argue that it is the humans who need to be depopulated – could we all not do with fewer chavs, neds and benefit scroungers? I can almost hear the roar of support from the Daily Mail readers.

There have never been very many vampires here, they have always been more common on the mainland and to the east in what are now called the countries of Eastern Europe, Romania obviously but also all those counties you never hear about unless it's the Eurovision Song Contest, like Belarus, Estonia, Moldova, Ukraine, Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro. There are still wild places there in the east, wild places and unrest. Vampires like war, it's a good cover. Millions of people displaced, disappearing. Perfect. You can feed and feed and no-one has time to get nosy, they just blame it on the most recent dictator and his penchant for extermination.

Unfortunately there hasn't been much in the way of sustained warfare in England since the 12th century. Makes it bloody awkward to feed. It would be nice not to have to be so damn careful all the time, which brings us to the subject of this little story: me.

My name is Sophie and this is the story about how I became a monster and then how I un-became a monster. I guess we should start with the basics, I am 19, or 26, or 45 depending on how you want to look at it. I was a perfectly normal, middle-class human girl for the first 19 years, for the next 10 I was a psychopathic murdering machine, and for the past 16 years I have been trying not be that psychopathic murdering machine.


	2. Girl

Chapter 1

The girl pulled her hood closer round her face to protect herself from the driving sleet and bitter wind as she paced back to her halls along the dark, wet streets of Glasgow. She was young, still a teenager and anyone looking at her face would have seen large dark eyes, a long straight nose and strong jaw with long curled and dark blond hair pulled back in a half ponytail, but wrapped up as she was so completely in her dark coat the few passers by hardly noticed her. It was late, nearly 10pm and the January weather had discouraged all but the most determined out of doors. She was just another student in this studenty part of town. She had been at the university library all day and her shoulder bag was weighed down with books and note pads, the megalithic building was someway behind her now but she had been hoping the weather would let up, that's why she hadn't set off earlier but it had gotten too late to leave it any longer.

She turned down a dark, quiet street off the main road, the streetlight had blown but she didn't appear unnerved by the gloom. She had the look of someone who had made this trip hundreds of times before and had grown unafraid of familiar streets. The streets of Glasgow are a warren, miles of high tenements crisscrossed by narrow dead-end backstreets, many still with their original Victorian cobble stones which lead to gardens, the occasional garage and communal bins. The girl was just walking past the opening of one of these small side alleys when it happened.

It was so quick she didn't even know what 'it' was. One moment she was walking quickly and purposely down the street and the next she was slammed against the wet brick wall half way down the alley. She didn't even have time to form a thought before something cold sliced into her neck. That was when she screamed. Well she tried to scream but whatever was slicing into her neck was compressing her windpipe and she couldn't force the air out of her lungs. She still hadn't had time to form thoughts but her body, seconds ahead of her brain, tried to struggle against whatever was causing the pain but it couldn't move. Her whole body was encased in iron chains she could feel them ice-cold digging into her shoulders, pressed into her chest.

Then, as suddenly as it had started the pressure left her neck, she was able to move her head and she looked up. She was staring at the side profile of a man. That was the first shock, it didn't feel like she was being held by a man but maybe she was dreaming, her whole body was feeling weak and loose, the very edges of her vision were blurred and she blinked to try and dispel it. The man had a very striking profile, sharp and powerful, his hair and sideburns were unfashionably long and the muscles of his neck were taught and hard like he was stressed or concentrating. He was looking away from her down the alley at something she couldn't see or hear.

A wave of understanding hit her and she knew she was dying, the cut on her neck was burning like she had it held to a curling iron and it was getting hotter but at the same time she felt like this was all a very long way away, like she was falling to sleep. This man was killing her and but she didn't want to die, even in dreams you don't want to die. Just then the man, her murderer, turned back to her. She could tell he didn't mean to look at her, maybe he didn't expect her to be looking at him, but their eyes met. He was glorious. The faint orange light that illuminates all cities shone on his face, on his high, proud cheek bones, his full lips, his heavy eyebrows, his halo of dark, lightly waved shoulder length hair, it made her gasp. 'This is it', she thought, 'when he looks away from me he will kill me'. This was her only chance and she had to take it, however unlikely it seemed that she would be able to succeed. She looked hard into his violent eyes, vivid, bloody red as they were and spoke, putting all her strength and longing into every syllable.

'_Please…don't…kill…me.'_

It came out as a broken and fragmented whisper but she never took her eyes away from his. A second passed and she didn't look away, she just concentrated on this man and his fierce eyes, tried to pass to him how much she didn't want to die down this dark, sodden alley. The man's eyes contracted infinitesimally but she couldn't fight anymore. Her vision was fading, she couldn't see anything except red eyes floating alone in darkness and she followed them as they diminished into blackness.


	3. Damn!

Chapter 2

_Sorry these chapters have been so short, they won't all be!_

'Damn it, damn it, damn it.'

I was racing as quickly as I could though the most deserted streets I could find out of the West End and towards the old docks on the banks of the river. There were dozens of abandoned buildings in that part of the city, the best and closest place to hide a changing vampire. The girl in my arms was still unconscious but I knew that wouldn't last long, her heart was still beating a slow and steady rhythm and once the venom got going she was going to wake up and start making an awful lot of noise.

I didn't know what had possessed me to pick this one after decades of indecision over making a companion. She wasn't even my type; too young, too plain, too visible. I normally fed on people in the margins of society, people no-one was going to miss. This girl was clearly not one of those, she smelt faintly of paper and ink, and walking where she was with a heavy bag she was probably a student at the university. Someone was going to notice she wasn't in her bed tonight and the authorities were going to get involved, we were both going to have to keep a low profile for a long time. I looked down at her while I ran, she seemed totally unconscious, her eyes were shut and her dark blond curls, wet from the driving rain, were sticking to her broad, pale face. I wasn't sure if she had enough blood to transform successfully, how much had I taken? Well if she died at least I wouldn't have a newborn to worry about. What had possessed me?

We had reached our destination; the old shipbuilding warehouse loomed out of the darkness. There were no humans for almost a mile around, well apart from a few homeless men sheltering in another abandoned building a few hundred meters away but I could smell the alcohol from here. They weren't going to be in any shape to comment on any noise coming from here. Once I'd leapt through a broken window some 20ft up I made my way to the Forman's office. There were no external windows in this small room, only one which looked over the covered warehouse yard. In one corner there was a stove and a chair, apart from that the room was bare.

I laid the girl on the floor as far away from the stove as possible and stood back. She was beginning to come round, her whole body was twitching, her eyelids fluttering, her cheeks were becoming flushed, her heartbeat was speeding. She was moments away from consciousness.

Sure enough three seconds later her whole body tensed, her eyes shot open and she let out an ear-piercing scream. This was going to be a long three days…..


End file.
